Divine Genocide or Capital Punishment?

Atheists have often expressed their outrage at what they consider to be acts of “divine genocide” in the Old Testament. Yet when one considers the egregious behavior of the cultures God wanted to be destroyed, it becomes clear that God’s actions were capital punishments instead for abominable sins (Genesis 15:15-16; Deuteronomy 7:2-5). Accordingly, this blog will identify the moral depravity of the Canaanites to demonstrate why God’s justice was required.

The Canaanites lived in Canaan, which is located in present-day Lebanon and Israel and parts of Syria and Jordan. Canaanites (descendants of Canaan; Genesis 10:15-18) include the following groups: the Hivites, Girgashites, Jebusites, Hittites, Amorites, and Perizzites (Deuteronomy 7:1; 20:17). They were a wicked, detestable group of people who were known for their child sacrifice (e.g., Leviticus 20:1-27; Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:10-13; Jeremiah 7:31; 19:5; 19:46; 32:25), idolatry (Deuteronomy 4:28), incest (Leviticus 18), prostitution (1 Kings 14:23-24), immoral sex (Leviticus 18), adultery (Leviticus 18; Numbers 25:1-4), and bestiality (Leviticus 18).

Canaanite gods

Clay Jones (2010) states, “Molech* was a Canaanite underworld deity (Day, 1989) represented as an upright, bullheaded idol with a human body in whose belly a fire was stoked and in whose outstretched arms a child was placed that would be burned to death. The victims were not only infants; children as old as four were sacrificed (Brown, 1991). Kleitarchos reported that ‘as the flame burning the child surrounded the body, the limbs would shrivel up and the mouth would appear to grin as if laughing, until it was shrunk enough to slip into the cauldron.’”

The Greek first and second century author Plutarch stated “the whole area before the statue was filled with the loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people” (in White, 2012). Archaeologists have found children’s bodies in stone pillars, jars, home frames, drains, and sewers (c.f., Stager, 1991).

Present-day scholars have supported the conclusion that child sacrifices as a result of burning were prevalent in the ancient near east (c.f., Hallett, 1995). As indicated by Smith (2013, p. 110) “There is always a degree of uncertainty involving such scientific studies, especially since the human remains were subjected to intense heat and are thousands of years old. Nonetheless, when scholars consider the totality of all the evidence, the sacrificial interpretation of the anthropological remains at Carthage has a far greater likelihood of being correct.” The Phoenicians in Carthage were descendants of the Canaanites.

“In I Kings 11:7, Molech is identified as ‘the detestable god of the Ammonites’ and recent archeological evidence in the former territory of the Ammonites from the period of the Conquest supports biblical testimony that child sacrifice was practiced in Jordan roughly contemporarily with Moses. (Wenham, 1979). The Hebrew word Molech is the same Semitic root as the Punic word mulk which was found inscribed on several burial monuments at Carthage giving linguistic evidence for the continuity between the practice of child sacrifice in Canaan and at Carthage. But whereas at Carthage the word refers to the sacrificial offerings including human sacrifice, in Leviticus it refers to the god who demands child sacrifice. The ‘passing through’ refers to sacrificing by burning in a fire. For this ‘passing through to Molech’ (same Hebrew words in Leviticus and Jeremiah) took place later in Israel’s history in the region of the high places of Ba’al in the Valley of Ben Hinnom in Jeremiah 32:35. This murderous scene was described by the Lord through the mouth of Jeremiah in earlier chapters” (White, 2012).**

To appease Baal and for the benefit of receiving good crops and personal prosperity, they sacrificed animals (1 Kings 18:23). In times of crisis, they sacrificed their children, usually the first born son, which the Bible calls “detestable” (Deuteronomy 12:31; 18-9-10; c.f., Smith, 2013). Sometimes the wealthy would purchase children from poor people, sacrificing them in an attempt to fool the gods, yet if their crops remained poor, they would sacrifice their own children (Smith, 2013).

Canaanites worshipped through ritual sex (c.f., Smith, 2013). They would reenact sex between Baal with his sister/mother/sexual partner Asherah. “Pagans practiced ‘sympathetic magic,’ that is, they believed they could influence the gods’ actions by performing the behavior they wished the gods to demonstrate. Believing the sexual union of Baal and Asherah produced fertility, their worshippers engaged in immoral sex to cause the gods to join together, ensuring good harvests. This practice became the basis for religious prostitution (1 Kings 14:23-24). The priest or a male member of the community represented Baal. The priestess or a female member of the community represented Asherah. In this way, God’s incredible gift of sexuality was perverted to the most obscene public prostitution.” (Vander Laan, 2018).

The Canaanite gods were incestuous, adulterous, and endorsed the morally obscene practice of bestiality. A Canaanite epic poem depicts the latter: “Mightiest Baal hears / He makes love with a heifer in the outback / A cow in the field of Death’s Realm. / He lies with her seventy times seven / Mounts eighty times eight / [She conceiv]es and bears a boy” (Smith, 1997).

Canaanite lifestyle

“Canaanite worship was socially destructive. Its religious acts were pornographic and sick, seriously damaging to children, creating early impressions of deities with no interest in moral behavior. It tried to dignify, through the use of religious labels, depraved acts of bestiality and corruption. It had a low estimate of human life. It suggested that anything was permissible, promiscuity, murder or anything else, in order to guarantee a good crop at harvest. It ignored the highest values of the wider community – love, loyalty, purity, peace and security – and encouraged the view that all these things were inferior to material prosperity, physical satisfaction, and human pleasure. A society where those things matter is most self-destructive” (Brown, 1993).

God’s command

Canaan was the “promised land” and during the exodus from Egypt, God called on the Israelites to overtake the Canaanites. “Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 20:16–18).

The Israelites failed in this regard and exactly what God predicted occurred (Judges 2:1-3; 1 Kings 11:5; 14:24; 2 Kings 16:3-4). God did not order the Canaanites to be exterminated as an act of cruelty. Rather, he ordered extermination to prevent greater evil in the future.

God wanted to separate the chosen people from the Canaanites so that they would not be corrupted by them. Yet, despite God’s warnings to the Israelites that he would “vomit” them out just as he vomited the Canaanites out (Numbers 33:56; Leviticus 18:28; Deuteronomy 4:23-29; 8: 19-20) if they worshipped the Canaanite gods, as time passed the Israelites could not resist. They committed evil acts (Judges 10:6; 1 Kings 14:22; 2 Kings 17:10) and acts of lewdness, incest and adultery (Jeremiah 5:7; 29:23; Hosea 4:13–14; Ezekiel 22:10–11; Amos 2:7). They also had male shrine prostitutes (1 Kings 14:22) and they worshipped idols. Solomon set up an altar to the god Molech (1 Kings 11:5, 7-8).

God’s justice

So the Lord said that Israel was “like Sodom to me” (Jeremiah 23:14), and he allowed the Assyrian king to kill or deport most of those residing in the northern Israel in 722 BC and Nebuchadnezzar to do the same in 586 BC in the south (Judah). God had told Jeremiah that he wouldn’t destroy Jerusalem if he could even find one righteous person (Jeremiah 5:1), but apparently he found none.

Conclusion

So, when atheists like Richard Dawkins claim God committed “divine genocide,” we should remind them that God knows what is best for us. Had the Canaanites (or those in Sodom and Gomorrah) flourished, we would be in a much different world today.

God’s disgust with child sacrifices has been made clear in dozens of Bible verses. See here:

* “Moloch, also spelled Molech, a Canaanite deity associated in biblical sources with the practice of child sacrifice. The name derives from combining the consonants of the Hebrew melech (“king”) with the vowels of boshet (“shame”), the latter often being used in the Old Testament as a variant name for the popular god Baal (“Lord”).” Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moloch-ancient-god

** Footnotes from the White (2012) passage:

Wenham, G.J., The New International Commentary on the Old Testament-The Book of Leviticus, 1979, p. 259. There are text critical problems with I Kings 11:7. It may be that Milcum should be substituted for Molech in this verse (see I Kings 11:5, 33 in Hebrew)

Some scholars suggest that some uses of Molech in the Old Testament may have originally been used to refer to the live sacrificial offerings like Punic mulk. e.g., Mosca, P.G., op. cit., for summary see conclusions of chapter two and three.

Some scholars unconvincingly suggest that the “passing throught to Molech” was a ritual “passing through” without active sacrifice. e.g., Snaith, N.H., “The Cult of Molech,” Vetus Testamentum, 1966, vol. 16, pp. 123, 124. For the best refutation of this view see: Mosca, P.G., op. cit., esp. p. 152; also see the Jeremiah passages quoted in this article.

Click here for a very well-developed article by Paul Copans on the same topic: http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=63

It’s no wonder that people get so upset about it. All we need is rampant bestiality and we are basically the Canaanites, only instead of doing these shameful things for a good harvest we do them for personal pleasure and expression.

Thank you for writing this post. I have a few questions that are pertinent to the topic.

1) You quote Clay Jones as saying, “Molech (King Baal) was a Canaanite underworld deity….” However, Jones doesn’t mention Baal at all in that sentence so it seems you have added it to give the impression that Molech is the same as Baal. Do you have any evidence for this?

2) You wrote, “Present-day scholars have supported the conclusion that child sacrifices as a result of burning were prevalent during the time of the Canaanites.” Then you quote H.B. Smith, Jr. as support. However, as is clear even from your quote, Smith isn’t talking about Canaan but about the city of Carthage in the western Mediterranean. What definitive evidence do you have that child-sacrifice was a regular Canaanite, not Carthaginian, practice?

3) You cite Raymond Brown’s short commentary on Deuteronomy to support the idea that the Canaanites were absolutely terrible people whose religious views were self-destructive. Brown does not offer any scholarly support for that assessment. Do you have any?

4) You believe that Yahweh was justified in destroying entire people groups that included children who in all likelihood would not have willingly participated in their religious worship. Yet elsewhere you wrote about the Jewish people, “God has always punished sins and rewarded righteousness, so punishing the Jewish group as a whole for the sins of others is inconsistent with the scriptures.” (https://christian-apologist.com/2018/01/19/the-suffering-servant-of-isaiah-53-a-response-to-elisha-ben-abuya/) If this is true, then wouldn’t it be unrighteous for God to punish children for the sins of their parents? Didn’t God himself say that the saying “the parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge” would never be said ever again in Israel since the one who sins is the one who would be punished (Jeremiah 31:29-30)? Isn’t it unjust to punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty?

Molech does share the root of the Hebrew word for king – m-l-k. And Baal does mean “lord.” But in context you were speaking of the Canaanite pantheon in which Baal is a storm god who ends up ruling over the gods in his victory of Tam and Mot (per the Baal Cycle). Moloch, per Jones, is an underworld deity. Underworld deities reign over the dead. These are two different domains and Moloch and Baal were two different deities.

I’d also be interested in your replies to my three other questions as it seems they undermine your entire piece.

I have absolutely zero scholarly references. So, I’ll hypothesize: Let’s say that the Canaanites were as dastardly as is represented in this blog. Surely that would justify an invasion and invigorate the soldiers. Add to that the decree that Canaan was the promised land, and the bloodshed becomes a completely righteous act.

So, now let’s say that the “evil” behavior of the farmers in the land west of the Jordan is, these days, dubious, and that the sources in this blog aren’t as conclusive as the blog suggests. Additionally, we could say that the claim that God declared this land to be the promised land is unverifiable, because it is. What we’re left with is the possibility that the entire thing is a story created to justify an invasion and rile up the soldiers, which happens quite literally every time soldiers invade anywhere, especially if it’s with the intention of taking someone’s land from them. It’s the only way to convince your everyday average person that going somewhere that doesn’t belong to them and killing the people there is justified. “God said they’re bad, so let’s get ’em.”

Personally, the latter seems more plausible to me- but then again that’s because I have a preconceived notion that the Bible isn’t a trustworthy source of historical fact.

The idea that you should punish the child for the parental activities is not one I can agree with it would be the equivalent of punishing the whole present day German population for the holocaust. It reminds me of the government apologies on behalf of the nation in which every person in the nation is guilty.
Modern bioscience has produced DNA and the inheritance of genes which seems to suggest the old proverb ‘ like father like son’ holds water but in my opinion it is a dangerous precedent. Of course the Christian doctrine of original sin paints us all with the same brush strokes it another dangerous precedent removing individual responsibility.

God’s wrath for child sacrifice (etc) is to slay everyone, (Capital Punishment), including the babies,children and animals that committed no sin. God is good, as the bible continually has to remind us. It would be easy to forget that fact amongst the blood bath that constitutes the Old Testament.

Moloch/Molech was not the same as Ba’al Hadad or Hammon. John Day argues for an individual deity named Mlk.

Now if you wish to argue differently, I’d like you to explain how they are the same, when the name Moloch comes from the root m-l-k and is not used in conjunction with the name ba’al, from the root b’l? There is no etymological relation. I’d add what Baal would you be saying that he is the same as?

Certainly not Hadad, as Hadad was a storm deity more related to gods like Zeus, but if you check with our later Historians outside of the Bible (Diodorus or Plutarch) they identify the child sacrifice as occurring to a Phoenician variant of Cronus, Ba’al Hammon (who was worshiped in Carthage).

Now I would also add that there is no relation in the Bible that Moloch and any Ba’al were the same either. Biblical Ba’al is actually Hadad (he became associated with the epithet entirely). Given that Carthage is never once referenced in the Bible, it is hard to make the identification of Moloch with Ba’al.

You also don’t seem to consider other variants that would tie these issues together better. What if he was actually Tyrian Melqart (which in some variants has the spelling mlk qrt, thus giving a similar root)? I also see you didn’t consider Otto Eissfeldt’s examinations, that mlk could be referring to a specific type of sacrifice, and not a theonym, a view supported by Mosca in the 70’s.

There is still debate to this day about whether or not there was ever a god called Moloch. And if there was, that god was not the same as the Ba’als of Canaan, but a completely separate deity in his own right, as John Day argued.

——————-

I am more than willing to grant that human sacrifice was practiced. We have Babylonian inscriptions which seem to depict it, and it was definitely a thing in Carthage (though the presence of it in the Levant is still debated, however I find Dewrell’s argument that it was present in Canaan to be convincing). But what I am not willing to grant is the rather, in my opinion, obscenely unsubstantiated claim that Ba’al and Moloch were the same. Day and Jones would both contest that.

I referenced the Encyclopedia Britannica at the end to indicate what the authors there have identified, which is that the Old Testament authors referred to Molech as a variant of Baal. Do you have evidence that they don’t?